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POLITICO LIVE: Speech analysis

Obama inaugural address: Social Security, Medicare

“The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us,” Obama told the cheering crowd as he launched his second term. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

He’s done just enough to earn credit for trying harder than any other Democratic president to tackle the issue, but he has yet to throw the full weight of his office or his formidable campaign operation behind it. His best chance will come early in his second term as lawmakers confront a series of budget battles, but Obama appears more ready to spend his political capital on guns, immigration and climate change.

The president has never precisely defined what hard choices he would be willing to make on Medicare and Social Security. It’s not even clear what he would do if he had the power to remake the programs on his own, without worrying about opposition from Republicans or Democrats.

And though Obama has talked about shared sacrifice from both parties, he has not gotten to the point in deficit negotiations at which he’s had to pressure rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers to cross their red line on the sacred issues, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did with his own party in raising taxes.

Unless Obama seizes the opportunity in the next few months, entitlement reform will hang over his second term, lurking like a legacy-killer if he hands off the task to the next president, deficit hawks warn.

“Either you get a handle on health care and Social Security solvency or he will have a failed presidency,” said Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s fiscal commission and a former Republican senator from Wyoming. “It is that simple. I don’t think he ran for reelection to have a failed presidency.”

It certainly wouldn’t be for a lack of trying on the issue, White House officials insist.

Obama infuriated Democrats by proposing controversial changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security during his failed 2011 grand-bargain talks with Boehner. The president was ready to make some entitlement concessions in the fiscal cliff negotiations last month, but that effort fizzled, too.

White House officials said if they had a bipartisan deal to sell, they would do so. But with the barometer of White House commitment measured these days in email solicitations, Twitter hashtags and Air Force One miles, entitlement reform has barely registered so far.

Obama is willing to pick up where he and Boehner left off in December, administration officials said, but a deal rests on whether Republicans choose to re-engage as productive negotiating partners.

“The Republican Party talks a big game when it comes to entitlement reform, but when push comes to shove, they lack the courage of their convictions,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. “They selected the author of their Medicare voucher plan as their vice presidential nominee and then pretended the plan didn’t exist and spent millions of dollars attacking Democrats for cuts in Medicare they supported.”